A group of House and Senate negotiators agreed in principle to a deal to avoid another federal government shutdown; it includes $1.375 billion for fencing and other physical barriers at the Mexican border but not the $5.7 billion for wall construction President Trump demanded, The New York Times reports.
“The agreement would allow for 55 miles of new bollard fencing, with some restrictions on location based on community and environmental concerns, according to two congressional aides, who requested anonymity to disclose details of the private negotiations. That is a fraction of the more than 200 miles of steel-and-concrete wall that Mr. Trump demanded—and 10 miles less than negotiators agreed on last summer, before Democrats took control of the House.”
Trump has doubled down on his demand for a wall since the last partial government shutdown ended, most recently at a rally in El Paso, Texas, last night.
But it’s unclear whether Trump will oppose the new deal, Bloomberg reports, citing an unnamed “administration official.”
It’s “very difficult” to comment “until we actually see the language,” White House spokesman Hogan Gidley told Fox News. “We don’t know what’s in it at this time.”
The new deal includes an agreement to limit the number of beds used for migrants held in detention. It would also “provide $1.7 billion more for border security, including technology at ports of entry, more officers and humanitarian aid,” the Times reports.
Both houses of Congress must pass the proposed legislation, which must be signed by Trump. The current temporary government funding bill expires on Friday.
The Trump administration said it would leave the landmark Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces treaty tomorrow, accusing Russia of violating its terms, the Associated Press reports.
The 1987 treaty bans ground-launched cruise missiles with a range between 310 miles and 3,400 miles. The U.S. says Russia has been developing such missiles in violation of the treaty; Russia denies that, the AP reports.
“Some analysts worry the demise of the centerpiece of superpower arms control could fuel a new arms race. U.S. officials fear that China, which is not party to the treaty, is gaining a significant military advantage in Asia by deploying large numbers of missiles with ranges beyond the treaty’s limit.”
If the U.S. goes through with the withdrawal, it will become effective in six months, giving both sides time to resolve their differences. The AP says that is unlikely.
After that, the U.S. will be free to test and deploy such weapons, though senior unnamed “Trump administration officials” told the AP that the U.S. is not in a position to test or deploy such weapons and one official said that only non-nuclear missiles are being considered for future development and potential deployment.
After a weekend marked by bitter recriminations over race and political bias, with the nation transfixed by viral videos depicting a confrontation between a crowd of Catholic schoolboys and a Native American elder, calls went out Monday — the federal holiday celebrating the life of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. — for restraint.
In the Twittersphere, a warning not to leap to conclusions gained currency across thepolitical spectrum. As the events in question grew murkier, some who had reacted angrily sought to muffle their own social-media megaphones, chastened by yet another illustration of how the Internet widens the ideological differences among Americans, sowing confusion and discord. “This whole nation needs to take a deep breath before rushing to judgment,” advised Dana Loesch, the spokeswoman for the National Rifle Association, who is hardly known for her mild approach to rhetorical combat.
But for President Trump, the dispute was not to be missed. It offered red meat to a president who has eagerly stoked the culture wars, while seizing every opportunity to discredit the news media.
Weighing in Tuesday morning on Twitter, Trump described Nick Sandmann, an 11th-grade student at Covington Catholic High School in Park Hills, Ky., and his fellow students as “symbols of Fake News and how evil it can be.” Yet he also suggested that the Catholic teenagers could use the attention to “bring people together.”
Donald J. Trump
✔@realDonaldTrump
Nick Sandmann and the students of Covington have become symbols of Fake News and how evil it can be. They have captivated the attention of the world, and I know they will use it for the good – maybe even to bring people together. It started off unpleasant, but can end in a dream!
That the students at the center of the latest controversy over race and political malice were wearing hats trumpeting his campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again,” put Trump at center stage. That their cause found support on the president’s favored television channel made his input all but inevitable.
The president first entered the fray on Monday night, lending his support to a campaign to vindicate the students, whose cause has been taken up by conservative media and a GOP-linked public relations team. Trump tweeted in defense of Sandmann, who was censured on social media when early footage of the Friday encounter in front of the Lincoln Memorial showed him grinning as an Omaha elder, Nathan Phillips, 64, beat a drum in prayer.
The all-male college preparatory school was closed Tuesday because of security concerns, according to a local Fox News affiliate, which cited a letter from the principal, Robert Rowe. “After meeting with local authorities, we have made the decision to cancel school and be closed on Tuesday, January 22, in order to ensure the safety of our students, faculty and staff,” the letter stated.
Local officials say they are investigating threats of violence against the school and individual students. Kenton County Commonwealth’s Attorney Rob Sanders said he cannot say anything more about the nature of the threats and did not answer questions about who investigators believe were behind them or who were targeted.
Members of the American Indian Movement Chapter of Indiana and Kentucky condemned threats of violence against the students.
“That’s horrible. Any threat of violence against a child is completely, completely wrong.” said Lance Soto, co-chair of the group.
Soto said the group is holding a “peace vigil” Tuesday outside the Catholic Diocese of Covington, which he said has not reached out to the organization or other indigenous people in the area.
“We would like to say, ‘We are here. There is an indigenous community here that you can reach out to,’” he said.
Thomas Pearce, also a co-chair of the group, blamed Trump for the clash at Lincoln Memorial and for the fallout that followed.
“I think it was something that happened in an environment that was filled by hatred from our president … That’s all I can say,” Pearce said.
Trump blamed the media, which he said was responsible for “early judgements proving out to be false.”
Trump’s verdict appeared to draw on Tucker Carlson’s segment Monday night on Fox News. It signaled the White House’s endorsement of a rival narrative, which first took shape on Reason.com, the libertarian website, after fuller video of the encounter emerged.
Donald J. Trump
✔@realDonaldTrump
Looking like Nick Sandman & Covington Catholic students were treated unfairly with early judgements proving out to be false – smeared by media. Not good, but making big comeback! “New footage shows that media was wrong about teen’s encounter with Native American” @TuckerCarlson
The opposing account casts the teenager and his classmates as victims twice over, not just of verbal abuse on the Mall but also of online vilification drawing on headlines that appeared to reach conclusions about the episode based on incomplete evidence.
At first, politicians sounded the alarm. Celebrities professed outrage. School officials joined the Catholic Diocese of Covington in apologizing for the students, who were threatened as their private information poured out online.
Butt the tides shifted over the weekend as additional footage emerged, showing that the standoff came on the heels of an encounter with a group of Hebrew Israelites, who believe black Americans are God’s chosen people. The African American protesters, several of whom said the students had mocked them, directed racial and homophobic invective their way, videos show. So, too, did the extended footage reveal behavior by the students that some considered a confirmation of their wrongdoing.
Organizers of the March for Life, an annual antiabortion event that had drawn the teenagers to the nation’s capital, initially called the students’ behavior “reprehensible,” but in a revised statement Sunday said, “It is clear from new footage and additional accounts that there is more to this story than the original video captured.” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) praised the students, tweeting that “in the face of racist and homosexual slurs, the young boys refused to reciprocate or disrespect anyone.”
Massie weighed in again Monday to thank Trump for supporting his constituents.
Looking like Nick Sandman & Covington Catholic students were treated unfairly with early judgements proving out to be false – smeared by media. Not good, but making big comeback! “New footage shows that media was wrong about teen’s encounter with Native American” @TuckerCarlson
“Not good, but making big comeback!” the president wrote of the treatment of Sandmann, who released a statement over the weekend maintaining that he was blameless. Trump quoted a chyron splashed across the screen during the Fox News segment, “New footage shows that media was wrong about teen’s encounter with Native American.”
Carlson criticized the media for circulating an incomplete clip, which he called “an entire morality play shrunk down to four minutes for Facebook.” He was particularly hard on conservative commentators who had joined liberals in sympathizing with the Native leader, singling out Bill Kristol, the co-founder of the now-defunct Weekly Standard magazine, for a since-deleted tweet asking his followers to mull over the “contrast between the calm dignity and quiet strength of Mr. Phillips and the behavior of #MAGA brats who have absorbed the spirit of Trumpism.”
“It wasn’t just left versus right — it was the people in power attacking those below them, as a group,” Carlson said, suggesting that Republicans had been moved to speak out to “inoculate themselves from charges of improper thought.”
Still, the partisan fault lines that seemed to shape the disagreement were reinforced on Monday, when the Louisville Courier-Journal reported that Sandmann’s family had retained the Louisville-based public relations firm RunSwitch PR. One of the firm’s partners, Scott Jennings, served in the George W. Bush administration and “is regarded as one of Mitch McConnell’s closest outside political confidants,” according to his profile for the Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics.
“You’re hardly a Trump partisan,” Carlson said of Robby Soave, an associate editor at Reason.com who joined the Fox News host on his show Monday night. Soave was among the first to question whether the Catholic teenagers were in the wrong. “It was all there,” Soave told Carlson. “You just had to watch the almost two hours of footage.”
Soave’s analysis gained broad attention over the weekend, disseminated by high-profile members of the media, such as CNN’s Jake Tapper.
“I, like many others may have reacted too quickly,” wrote Meghan McCain of ABC’s “The View,” who also shared the Reason rebuttal on Twitter. “Apologize for being part of a media pile on.”
“I Failed the Covington Catholic Test,” announced a headline in the Atlantic, where Julie Irwin Zimmerman, a writer based in Cincinnati, which lies across the Ohio River from Covington, gave voice to a media mea culpa. She said that in the future, she will reserve judgment until she has more facts, and, until then, “stick to discussing the news with people I know in real life, instead of with strangers whom I’ve never met.”
She also wrote that the story of the Catholic students and the tribal elder was a “Rorschach test — tell me how you first reacted, and I can probably tell where you live, who you voted for in 2016, and your general take on a list of other issues.”
But not everyone was convinced that a fuller picture of the events in Washington exonerated the students.
Walter M. Shaub Jr., who departed as the federal government’s top ethics watchdog in 2017 after clashing with the Trump administration, objected to Soave’s conclusion. Waleed Shahid, communications director for the left-wing Justice Democrats, argued that the earlier footage was in fact “so much worse.” And the writer and activist Amy Siskind asked why the school’s chaperones had not intervened.
The Media Wildly Mischaracterized That Video of Covington Catholic Students Confronting a Native…
Journalists who uncritically accepted Nathan Phillips’ story got this completely wrong.
reason.com
Walter Shaub
✔@waltshaub
This @robbysoave is wrong: “white, MAGA-hat-wearing male teenagers remained relatively calm & restrained.” Maybe ripping off a shirt, jeering, mocking native music, & doing a tomahawk motion is restrained on Planet White Power. But staring a man down is still aggressive on Earth.
President Trump has threatened to end federal funding for California wildfire assistance.
What’s False
It’s not clear whether Trump has in fact ordered FEMA to take any action with regard to its disaster assistance efforts in California, or whether such an order would be permitted by law if he did.
Origin
President Donald Trump repeatedly blamed state officials in California for the extent and frequency of devastating wildfires in 2018, pointing the finger at what he called poor “forest management” and threatening to cut off federal disaster assistance to the state, whose incoming and outgoing governors erre Democrats, and whose state legislature was controlled by the Democratic party.
Experts haveconcluded that these claims — that forest management policies and techniques were solely or primarily to blame for the historically-damaging 2018 wildfire season — are highly misleading and a gross over-simplification of the true causes, not least because the majority of California’s forests are owned by the federal government, not the state.
On 9 January 2019, Trump resumed his rhetorical attacks on California authorities and prompted inquiries from readers as to whether he had ordered the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to stop providing financial assistance to wildfire aid efforts in California.
President Trump wrote in a tweet that “Billions of dollars are sent to the State of California for Forest fires that, with proper Forest Management, would never happen.” The president added “Unless they get their act together, which is unlikely, I have ordered FEMA to send no more money. It is a disgraceful situation in lives & money!”:
Donald J. Trump
✔@realDonaldTrump
Billions of dollars are sent to the State of California for Forest fires that, with proper Forest Management, would never happen. Unless they get their act together, which is unlikely, I have ordered FEMA to send no more money. It is a disgraceful situation in lives & money!
Trump has in the past threatened to end federal wildfire assistance to California, warning in November 2018 that the state should “Remedy now, or no more [federal] payments!”, and his January 2019 tweet appeared to constitute at least another similar threat.
However, it’s not clear whether the president had actually given any order to FEMA in January 2019. He wrote “I have ordered FEMA to send no more money,” but prefaced this with a condition: “Unless they [California authorities] get their act together …”
We asked FEMA whether they had received any recent order from President Trump regarding the disaster assistance program in California, or funding for it, but we did not receive a substantive response in time for publication. Similarly, we asked the White House whether they could provide a copy of such an order, when it was issued, and what precisely it instructed FEMA to do or cease doing, but we did not receive a response in time for publication.
FEMA’s website still stated that the agency was “actively contacting California Wildfire survivors to determine their housing needs and working diligently to identify additional short-term and long-term housing options.” However the web site also featured a disclaimer that “Due to the lapse in federal funding, this website will not be actively managed.”
It was clear that President Trump has threatened to end federal assistance for California’s wildfire emergency, but it was uncertain whether he had actually given FEMA an order to that effect as of 10 January 2019.
Even if Trump were to attempt to follow through on his repeated threats (and it’s not clear that he has), such efforts might be prohibited by federal law, which places certain restrictions on the President of the United States once he or she has declared an emergency, something Trump did for California in November 2018.
Title 42, Section 5192 of the United States Code sets out the powers and obligations of the president after a state of emergency has been declared:
In any emergency, the President may —
(1) direct any Federal agency, with or without reimbursement, to utilize its authorities and the resources granted to it under Federal law (including personnel, equipment, supplies, facilities, and managerial, technical and advisory services) in support of State and local emergency assistance efforts to save lives, protect property and public health and safety, and lessen or avert the threat of a catastrophe, including precautionary evacuations …
(8) provide accelerated Federal assistance and Federal support where necessary to save lives, prevent human suffering, or mitigate severe damage, which may be provided in the absence of a specific request and in which case the President —
(A) shall, to the fullest extent practicable, promptly notify and coordinate with a State in which such assistance or support is provided; and
(B) shall not, in notifying and coordinating with a State under subparagraph (A), delay or impede the rapid deployment, use, and distribution of critical resources to victims of an emergency.
On 8 January, the day before Trump’s “send no more money” tweet, the governors of California, Oregon and Washington sent the president a joint open letter requesting “immediate attention and increased efforts to responsibly manage the lands owned by federal agencies in our states.”
Bud Caldwell’s deep love for his wife Betty transcended decades, continuing to burn brightly after she passed away.
His wife’s favorite song was “Daisy a Day”, and he ensured it was played many times during the course of their 56-year-long marriage.
Bud used to try and surprise his wife with bouquets of daisies when he could, sometimes breaking into the song as he handed them to her.
Sadly one day in 2013, Betty passed away. Bud was left alone.
CBS / YouTube
Yet Betty always remained on his mind; he always kept her close to his heart.
As a way of showing his lasting love and admiration for Betty, Bud bought a memory bench at Lakeside Park in Fon du Lac, Wisconsin.
The bench includes a small plaque with Betty’s picture, and some information about the woman Bud was proud to call his wife.
CBS / YouTube
Every day, Bud visited this memorial bench to honor and cherish his wife. Often he would just sit, singing her favorite song. He talked to her about the ongoings of his life; about the weather, what was going on in the world and how much he missed her.
But when snow began to fall and winter arrived, it was made harder for Bud to visit Betty’s bench. It became difficult for Bud to lay flowers or even show his love as he would like.
CBS / YouTube
On one particularly snowy day, Bud could only stand on the sidewalk and watch the bench from afar; the snow was simply too much for him to manage.
Little did he know that two strangers had noted Bud’s daily ritual and decided, in secret, to help.
Just watch the CBS news report below to see the selfless action that left me in tears.
It’s a story of love, kindness and two park staffers who will restore your faith in humanity.
There remain wonderful people out there after all. These guys didn’t have to strive to clear a lonely road in the middle of a deserted park, but they did it for Bud.
We need more everyday heroes like Jerrod and Joe – like and share if you agree!
Government cheese is processed cheese provided to welfare beneficiaries, Food Stamp recipients and the elderly receiving Social Security in the United States, and is still provided to food charities. The processed cheese was used in military kitchens since World War II and in schools since as early as the 1950s.
Government cheese is a commodity cheese that was controlled by the U.S. federal government from the time World War II ended and into the early 1980s. Government cheese was created to maintain the price of dairy when dairy industry subsidies artificially increased the supply of milk and created a surplus of milk that was then converted into cheese, butter, or powdered milk. The cheese, along with the butter and dehydrated powder, was stored in over 150 warehouses across 35 states.[1]
The cheese was often from food surpluses stockpiled by the government as part of milk price supports. Butter was also stockpiled and then provided under the same program. Some government cheese was made of kosher products.[3] This cheese product is also distributed to victims of a natural disaster following a state of emergency declaration.
This cheese became an important topic for the press in the 1980s when the press learned about the milk products that were being stored across the nation while millions of Americans felt food insecurity. During the same time in the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan’s administration cut the budget on the national food stamp program in the United States.[1]
On December 22, 1981 President Ronald Reagan signed and authorized into law that five hundred and sixty million pounds (250,000 metric tons) of cheese that the Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) had been stockpiled should be released, saying that it …
“… will be distributed free to the needy by nonprofit organizations.” Ronald Reagan, in his official statement about the distribution of the Cheese Inventory of the Commodity Credit Corporation, said, “The 1981 farm bill I signed today will slow the rise in price support levels, but even under this bill, surpluses will continue to pile up. A total of more than 560 million pounds of cheese has already been consigned to warehouses, so more distributions may be necessary as we continue our drive to root out waste in government and make the best possible use of our nation’s resources.”[4]
As the bill stated, any state that would ask for the cheese would get 30 million pounds (14,000 metric tons) of it, in 5-pound (2.3 kg) blocks. The bill was approved in the House by a margin of two votes; in the Senate it had a much larger approval rate. The logic behind the distribution was to effectively remove waste and to use all possible resources available in the United States. One representative from the USDA remarked that, “Probably the cheapest and most practical thing would be to dump it in the ocean.”[5]
The distribution of government cheese was claimed to not have an adverse effect on commercially available cheeses, as the government was required to purchase dairy products like cheese to keep the commercial companies afloat. The government could then sell or give the cheese away to foreign countries. At the time of Ronald Reagan’s signing of the 1981 farm bill, the cheese stockpile equaled to more than 2 pounds (1 kg) of cheese for each person living in the United States.[6] Government cheese was frequently moldy.[1] Those who received the cheese did not lose any food stamps and were not required to trade their food stamps in for the cheese. California was the first state to take the cheese; the first delivery that they received was for three million pounds (1,400 t) of cheese.[1] Government cheese was provided to welfare, food stamp, and Social Security recipients at no cost to them. Government cheese was colored orange. It was distributed to low-income families through the Temporary Emergency Food Assistance Program. Government cheese was nominally removed in the 1990s when the dairy market stabilized.[7]
Government cheese has become a symbol for American innovation and industrialization, although the nutritional value of the cheese has been in question.[7]It has been argued that people in poverty, such as those entitled to government cheese, are more likely to become obese. Between 1988-1994, those individuals below the poverty line had an obesity rate of 29.2 percent.[8] The Food Security Act of 1985 (the 1985 farm bill) attempted to reduce milk production, but has been labeled as a “hodgepodge of misdirected political compromise.”[9]
The nutrition facts on government cheese suggests a serving size of 1 ounce (28 g), or two slices, of cheese per serving. It also notes that the nutritional information represents the average nutritional value of “Processed American cheese” which was offered by the commodity food program. Per serving, the total fat content is 9 grams, of which 6 grams are saturated fat. Per serving, there are 30 mg of cholesterol and 380 mg of sodium.[2]
On August 23, 2016, the U.S Department of Agriculture released that they planned to purchase approximately eleven million pounds (5,000 t) of cheese,[10]worth $20 million,[11] to give aid to food banks and food pantries from across the United States,[10] to reduce a $1.2 billion[11] cheese surplus that has been at its highest level in thirty years, and to stabilize farm prices.[11] This purchase also added revenues for the dairy producers. Regarding the purchase, Agriculture SecretaryTom Vilsack said, “This commodity purchase is part of a robust, comprehensive safety net that will help reduce a cheese surplus that is at a 30-year high while, at the same time, moving a high-protein food to the tables of those most in need. USDA will continue to look for ways within its authorities to tackle food insecurity and provide for added stability in the marketplace.”[11]
Currently, as part of the USDA Food Nutrition Service Commodity Supplemental Food Program (CSFP), [12] eligible Seniors over age 60 are provided one 32-ounce block of processed cheese food each month, supplied by participating dairies.
The political paraphernalia on display during President Trump’s visits to Germany, above, and Iraq has raised questions at the Defense Department about protocol violations.CreditAl Drago for The New York Times
The political paraphernalia on display during President Trump’s visits to Germany, above, and Iraq has raised questions at the Defense Department about protocol violations.CreditCreditAl Drago for The New York Times
By Annie Karni-
WASHINGTON — During his surprise visit to American troops in Iraq and Germany this week, President Trump singled out red “Make America Great Again” caps in a sea of military fatigues, signed a “Trump 2020” patch and accused Representative Nancy Pelosi and other leading Democrats of being weak on border security.
Now the president is facing accusations that he was playing politics with the military.
“When that starts happening, it’s like the politicalization of the judicial branch,” said Mark Hertling, a retired three-star Army lieutenant general.
Visiting troops abroad is a presidential tradition in which the commander in chief puts aside politics to thank a military that represents a broad spectrum of the country. But Mr. Trump’s political comments and his encouragement of supporters in the crowd veered from those norms.
“He has to understand that there exist some audiences that should not be addressed as part of his base, because they are not,” Mr. Hertling said. “It’s a violation of protocol by the president.”
Then there was the president’s boast, which was incorrect, that the troops would be getting their first raise in more than a decade thanks to his leadership.
“You haven’t gotten one in more than 10 years — more than 10 years,” he told about 100 uniformed troops at Al Asad Air Base in Iraq. “And we got you a big one. I got you a big one.” In fact, the military has received steady pay increases for decades.
Trump in Iraq: First Visit to U.S. Troops in Combat
President Trump made a surprise visit to U.S. troops in Iraq on Wednesday, days after he said, despite advisers’ objections, that he would pull out all American soldiers in Syria and half of those in Afghanistan.Published OnCreditCreditAl Drago for The New York Times
Mr. Trump also turned a customary Christmas greeting into a broadside against Democrats, who are refusing to fund a wall along the southern border. The stalemate over the wall, Mr. Trump’s signature campaign promise, has resulted in a partial government shutdown.
“I don’t know if you folks are aware of what’s happening,” Mr. Trump said. “We want to have strong borders in the United States. The Democrats don’t want to let us have strong borders.”
“You know why?” he added. “Because I want it.”
Mr. Trump joked that his solution to obtaining funding for a wall was to claim that he did not want one anymore. “Tell Nancy Pelosi I don’t want the wall,” he said, adding: “And then we get the wall. That’s another way of doing it.”
“You’re fighting for borders in other countries, and they don’t want to fight, the Democrats, for the border of our country,” he added. “It doesn’t make a lot of sense.”
Mr. Trump at Al Asad Air Base in Iraq on Wednesday. “If these brave young people ask me to sign their hat, I will sign,” the president said.CreditAl Drago for The New York Times
Mr. Trump at Al Asad Air Base in Iraq on Wednesday. “If these brave young people ask me to sign their hat, I will sign,” the president said.CreditAl Drago for The New York Times
Ms. Pelosi’s deputy chief of staff, Drew Hammill, accused Mr. Trump of turning uniformed troops into scenery for a campaign speech. “He offered our brave men and women in uniform the bitter insult of using them as political pawns to push his radical right-wing, anti-immigrant agenda,” Mr. Hammill said. “The president turned his first visit to our troops into another cringe-worthy Donald Trump reality-show special.”
Some commentators on Fox News also criticized the president for injecting politics into the event.
“He talked about the border wall as well, which didn’t have a place there,” Julie Banderas, a Fox News contributor, said on the show “Outnumbered.” Another Fox News contributor on the show, Jessica Tarlov, criticized the president for using the visit “as a campaign rally.”
The political paraphernalia on display, which Mr. Trump appeared to encourage during his speech by referencing the caps he had signed, has raised questions at the Defense Department about violations of military protocol by the troops who greeted him. One woman in uniform at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, for instance, welcomed Mr. Trump with a “Make America Great Again” flag, according to a photograph posted on Twitter by a Bloomberg News reporter who accompanied Mr. Trump on the trip.
A directive from the department prohibits active-duty personnel from engaging in “partisan political activities” and advises that “all military personnel should avoid the inference that their political activities imply or appear to imply DoD sponsorship, approval or endorsement of a political candidate, campaign or cause.” Defense Department and Army regulations also prohibit military personnel from showing any political leanings while in uniform, Mr. Hertling said.
An official said the department was aware of the situation and “trying to figure it out” by tracking down photographs of troops holding red caps and campaign flags, and piecing together where the campaign paraphernalia came from.
Mr. Trump said on Thursday that he could not turn down any requests from the soldiers. “If these brave young people ask me to sign their hat, I will sign,” he tweeted. “Can you imagine my saying NO? We brought or gave NO hats as the Fake News first reported!”
Donald J. Trump
✔@realDonaldTrump
CNN & others within the Fake News Universe were going wild about my signing MAGA hats for our military in Iraq and Germany. If these brave young people ask me to sign their hat, I will sign. Can you imagine my saying NO? We brought or gave NO hats as the Fake News first reported!
The White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said administration officials did not distribute any campaign gear to the troops, and noted that “these were their personal belongings.”
On her Twitter feed, Ms. Sanders addressed a CNN.com report that raised questions about whether the red caps displayed for Mr. Trump to sign may have violated a military rule.
“CNN will attack anyone who supports President Trump, including the brave men and women of our military who fight everyday to protect our freedom,” Ms. Sanders wrote. She declined to comment further on the president’s speech.
In his remarks, Mr. Trump also boasted that he had secured “billions and billions of dollars of new equipment” for the military.
“You’re getting such new equipment, your eyes are popping, right?” he asked the troops.
It’s down to the wire. A group of House and Senate negotiators agreed in principle to a deal to avoid another federal government shutdown; it includes $1.375 billion for fencing and other physical barriers at the Mexican border but not the $5.7 billion for wall construction President Trump demanded, The New York Times reports. “The […]
Bombs away? The Trump administration said it would leave the landmark Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces treaty tomorrow, accusing Russia of violating its terms, the Associated Press reports. The 1987 treaty bans ground-launched cruise missiles with a range between 310 miles and 3,400 miles. The U.S. says Russia has been developing such missiles in violatio […]
By Isaac Stanley-Becker and Kristine Phillips https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/c/embed/f349ebf6-2574-43d3-a7b5-0e626ba05a0d After a weekend marked by bitter recriminations over race and political bias, with the nation transfixed by viral videos depicting a confrontation between a crowd of Catholic schoolboys and a Native American elder, calls went out […]
Claim In January 2019, President Donald Trump ordered FEMA to stop or cancel funding for its disaster assistance efforts in California. Rating MixtureAbout this rating What’s True President Trump has threatened to end federal funding for California wildfire assistance. What’s False It’s not clear whether Trump has in fact ordered FEMA to take any action […] […]
Bud Caldwell’s deep love for his wife Betty transcended decades, continuing to burn brightly after she passed away. His wife’s favorite song was “Daisy a Day”, and he ensured it was played many times during the course of their 56-year-long marriage. Bud used to try and surprise his wife with bouquets of daisies when he […]
